No matter how long you spent in that doomed relationship - a month, a year, a decade or more - breaking up isn’t a “waste” of all those years, because you still learn from it. You learned what not to accept in a partner, you learned to treat yourself with respect and dignity, you learned that you need to raise your standards, and in breaking up you learn how to enforce your boundaries.

Don’t keep withering away in a toxic situationship just because you’ve been dating since you were 16 and he’s all you’ve known, or you’ve been married for 20+ years.

What WOULD be a waste is staying in a relationship that is not benefitting you, you are wasting your future before it even happens. If he’s a leech you’re also wasting your time, money, energy and space by continuing to let him drain you. The time you spent with him can never be reclaimed, so there is no point in trying to hold on to the relationship even if you already have wasted lots of time and money. “But it’d be a waste to throw that out!” what are you losing out on? Erectile dysfunction and verbal abuse? That’s not an incentive to stay dating.

Sure, it sucks that you couldn’t have spent your years with someone better. But there are still years ahead of you – don’t throw those out by clinging to something you made a poor investment in. Sunk cost fallacy does you no good.